Students turning chickens into mummies as part of school project

Canisteo-Greenwood Middle School sixth-grade social studies students have started what students and staffers alike call a fascinating project involving the mummification of chickens.

Justin Head

Canisteo-Greenwood Middle School sixth-grade social studies students have started what students and staffers alike call a fascinating project involving the mummification of chickens.

The project began in three of Norma Bond’s classes this week as part of its ancient Egypt study unit.

“Students will actually be experiencing the way the mummification process works instead of hearing about it from a teacher or having me lecture or read about it. Instead, they actually get to experience it,” said Bond.

“I have a friend who teaches sixth grade in West Virginia and she had done it in her class and she had shown me Web sites to do it,” said Bond. She has been working to gather materials for weeks, collecting supplies from families and raising money from the teachers for the purchase of the chickens.

On Thursday, students began the process by removing giblets, washing the chickens out, drying them and packing their insides and outsides with salt.

“It was fun. ... It helps me understand what they really did,” said Cody Green. Green said he is looking forward to burying the chicken.

Each of Bond’s classes — about 65 students in total — will be changing the moist salt and adding new salt to the chickens every school day for the next two weeks.

“I just hope the smell doesn’t get to be too much, but I think by wrapping them tight in the bags and keeping them sealed we’ll be OK,” Bond said.

The students made comments like “ewww” and “gross” as they pulled the giblets out of 15 store-bought raw chickens, but they still couldn’t stifle smiles and laughter as they prepared the chickens for the beginning of the mummification.

After two weeks of changing the salt daily, the chickens will then be salted every other day. After about four weeks of salting the chickens, they will be oiled. Spices like cinnamon and rosemary will be added to simulate real mummification procedures. The chickens will then be wrapped in gauze and placed in a wood sarcophagus students designed, marked with a cartouche — a plaque with the mummy’s name on it — and then buried on campus. The spot of the burial has not been decided by the school’s groundskeeper yet.

“I have a variety of teachers doing a lot of unique things, but this is something special that has built a great deal of anticipation on something that they are now engaged in,” said Principal Penny Kephart.

Bond said her classes used 15 pounds of salt in the first phase of the project and she expects that number to climb.

“It’s as fun as going to the theme park,” said sixth-grader Madison Sharp. She said her favorite part of class was gutting the chicken.

“When I had to take the guts out everybody though it was gross, but I wanted to cut open the bag and see what they looked like inside,” said Sharp.

The project is as much an experience learning about Egyptians as it is one teaching about sanitization and how to handle raw met.

“We are also teaching them about diseases you can get from holding it,” Bond said. She placed disposable plastic tablecloths down, had students wear plastic gloves and sanitized each of the students’ hands after the chickens were bagged with salt.

The success of the project will not be known until next year when the same students — in the seventh grade— will dig the chickens up and play the role of archaeologists. Bond said fifth-grade students are excited, knowing they are supposed to do the project next year.

“We have an awesome staff, and adding such hands-on activity to the sixth-grade curriculum is a phenomenal experience for the students and one they will never forget,” said Kephart.

When asked about whether or not a chicken will mummify in a year, Bond said, “The process for the ancient Egyptians only took two or three months. It just depends on how much moisture is in the body for the salt to suck out of it.”